Bif! Bop! Bam!

In a big weekend for comics aficionados, the ever-stylish Puck Building again plays host to the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Arts Art Festival 2008, which features dozens of publishers and hundreds of artists in its exhibition hall. Special guests include David Hajdu (author of The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America), über-designer Chip Kidd, and insightful graphic novelist Jessica Abel. At MOCCAs nearby gallery on Broadway, presentations will include Nick Thorkelsons illustrated history of radical cartooning and screenings of recent Nordic animation. Jump-starting the festivities on June 6, the New York Institute for the Humanities hosts Post-Bang: Comics Ten Minutes After the Big Bang!, which addresses key trends and debates facing comics via roundtable discussions, a dialogue between comic stalwarts Art Spiegelman and Gary Panter, and a live interview with Lynda Barry (creator of the poignant Ernie Pooks Comeek). In another ancillary event on Saturday
evening, Blake Bell will sign copies of Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko at Jim Hanleys Universe. The venerable comics store will also screen In Search of Steve Ditko, a BBC documentary about the reclusive co-creator of Spider-Man.
June 7-8, 2008